TRIBUTE: EMMANUEL TUMUSIIME MUTEBILE, PILLAR OF UGANDA’S ECONOMIC RECOVERY

It may be hard for one to wrap ones mind around the full extent of Emmanuel Tumusiime Mutebile’s contribution to the resuscitation of the Uganda economy. We may not even know the half of it.

In 1986 when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) took over power, the economy was on its knees, it had regressed into subsistence, it was half the size it was in 1970 in real terms and the national coffers were empty.

"The NRM’s celebration were short lived when the reality hit them of the enormity of the task ahead of them...

Convinced they could do it alone without help from the usual suspects – The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in typical guerilla fashion, they decided to make do with what they had. They centralized the distribution of essential commodities like fuel, soap, paraffin and sugar, they made a go of jump starting some industries and battering coffee and grain for critical imports.

However, the laws of economics cannot be denied, as shortages persisted and inflation shot through the roof, peaking at 240 percent, before NRM realised their revolution was in danger of dying a still birth.

It took a night time meeting at Entebbe state house in which Mutebile, the chief economist in the economic planning ministry and then Bank of Uganda governor Leo Kibirango made the case for tighter government spending to curb inflation and a liberlised economy to jump start production, for the government to do an about face.

Following the meeting the ministries of finance and planning were merged and Mutebile assumed the position of Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury.

"Mutebile and his allies came out on top of an ideological battle, which on one side, argued that unlocking the individual capacities of business and Ugandans would reinvigorate the economy better than government alone could, the pragmatists, while on the other hand the idealists maintained that government should control the economy to ensure the economic independence of the country....

The idealists of course did not have Mutebile’s inside appreciation of the state of the economy and can be forgiven for their naiveté.

As the chief technocrat in the ministry, Mutebile over saw the liberalization of the foreign exchange market, the privatization of parastatals, the curbing of inflation from three to single digits and helped lay the foundation for the longest period of economic growth in the history of Uganda.

While also at the ministry he was instrumental in seeing millions of dollars of debt written off under the High Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, at the end of the last century.

While these reforms were all conditionalities for the aid taps to flow, they made good economic sense and Mutebile’s conviction and steady hand often made the difference between policy reversals and staying the path of economic reform.

"His detractors were legion, but the gruff speaking economist took them all on, winning them over with the strength of his argument or leaving them in his wake to gnash their teeth in exasperation as the economy powered on from strength to strength....

In 2001 he was appointed governor of the Bank of Uganda, already a pillar of the economic reforms but which was further galvanized to better oversee the country’s monetary policy, by the entrance of Mutebile.

The central bank has been recognized regionally and internationally for its stewardship of the country’s monetary policy and banking sector and has managed to ride out several crisis of confidence. He is the longest serving governor of the Bank of Uganda.

If there was a blindspot in his stewardship of the economy it was the shortfall in strategic planning, that would have allowed the government to direct the private sector to ensure more equitable growth. The private sector is the best mechanism for creating wealth but simultaneously the worst distributor of that same wealth. Left to its own devices the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, widening the divide between them to unsustainable levels.

Mutebile and his allies have argued severally that you need to first have economic growth – wealth creation, before you can distribute it.

Be that as it may, his contribution to the economic growth of the last three or so decades is undeniable. It is inconceivable that without a turnaround of the economy, we would now be debating the nuances of development theory...

By his example and influence Mutebile mentored several economists inside and outside government and one can expect his legacy is in safe hands.

Mutebile was born in 1949 in the then Kigezi district. He joined Makerere University to study politics and economics, which he failed to complete because he dared to question the rationale of Idi Amin’s economic war.

He completed his degree at Oxford University and added to it a Masters before returning to Uganda in the early 1980s.

Mutebile passed on in a Nairobi hospital on Sunday morning, his health had been failing for some time.